Nature - Season 30

Overview

ature is a wildlife television program produced by Thirteen/WNET New York. It has been distributed to United States public television stations by the PBS television service since its debut on October 10, 1982. Some episodes may appear in syndication on many PBS member stations around the U.S. and Canada and on the Discovery Channel. This series currently airs on Wednesday on PBS.

Nature is one of the most watched documentary series in the world. It is a weekly one-hour program that consists of documentaries about various animals and ecosystems. The on-camera host of the first season was Donald Johanson, with voice-over narration by George Page. Starting with the 1983 season George Page became both the on-camera host and the narrator until the series' 19th season in 2000. Since then, Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham has frequently narrated episodes, as has ecologist Chris Morgan.

Nature is one of the few programs in television history that has won and has been nominated for the same number of Emmy Awards during its longevity. In 1986, host George Page was nominated for best Outstanding Individual Achievements in Informational Programming. In 1988 and 1989, it won two Emmy Awards for best Outstanding Informational Series. In 2000, it was nominated for best Outstanding Main Title Design.

Episodes

What happens to nature after a nuclear accident? And how does wildlife deal with the world it inherits after human inhabitants have fled? Radioactive Wolves examines the state of wildlife populations in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone, an area that, to this day, remains too radioactive for human habitation.

Whales and dolphins conjure a deep sense of wonder in us that’s hard to explain. From the Arctic to the Amazon, this groundbreaking three-part series goes on a global expedition with world-renowned underwater cameramen, Doug Allen (Planet Earth) and Didier Noirot (Jacques Cousteau’s cameraman), as they capture spellbinding footage of these marine mammals. Ocean Giants looks at how cetaceans hunt, mate, and communicate, and follows scientists as they strive to uncover new insights about these animals.

The first hour, Giant Lives, enters the world of the great whales. In the Arctic, giant bowhead whales survive the freezing cold wrapped in fifty tons of insulating blubber two-feet thick, making them the fattest animals on the planet. But the biggest animal on the planet is the blue whale. Measuring a hundred feet long, and weighing in at 200 tons, it is double the size of the largest dinosaur.